I'm not crying in H Mart, you're crying in H Mart
The bestselling memoir on grief, family, and food by Japanese Breakfast bandleader Michelle Zauner — who is playing the Austin City Limits Festival — was worth the wait.
I’m glad I didn’t read Michelle Zauner’s New Yorker essay “Crying in H Mart” when it was published in 2018.
I’m glad I didn’t read her bestselling memoir of the same name, which came out in 2021, until this year.
I wasn’t ready for it.
First, a little backstory: The 33-year-old founder of the band Japanese Breakfast, who is in Austin this week for the Austin City Limits Musical Festival, came onto my radar as a musician when I first heard her music on local radio stations about three or four years ago.
I didn’t realize she was a serious writer until her memoir about how food helped her grieve her mother’s death was published to rave reviews just as I was leaving the Statesman last year. The “H Mart” in the book’s title is a popular Korean supermarket that has grown quickly in the past decade.
In another timeline, I would have reviewed her book for the paper. In another timeline, I wouldn’t know anything about what she was writing about.
But in this timeline, I do.
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